Sable Monroe

People with stable childhoods may read this story and think the important part is that my father accidentally gave me too much money for a school trip to Dunn’s River Falls and I quietly kept it.

They may clutch their pearls and say things like:
“You should have returned it.”
“That was dishonest.”
“You took advantage.”

Maybe.

But that is not what I remember emotionally.

What I remember is abundance.

I remember feeling normal.

At Alvernia Prep, I was one of those children floating awkwardly in the middle. Not poor enough for sympathy. Not rich enough for ease. I was the pretend rich child. The child who attended the school, wore the uniform, went on the trips, but quietly knew there were invisible differences between myself and the children whose parents seemed effortlessly prepared for everything.

Before the trip, my father handed me money. Two twenty-dollar bills stuck together by accident. He intended to give me forty dollars, but I ended up with eighty.

And let me tell you something honestly.

I was not devastated by this accounting error.

I felt chosen by God.

Because in my child mind, forty dollars was survival money. Eighty dollars was participation money.

Most of the class had enough money to casually order food at the burger place near Dunn’s River Falls. Real combo meals. Fries. Soda. No visible hesitation. No counting coins. No pretending not to be hungry.

I remember Renee bringing a watermelon and twenty dollars. She spent the day moving from child to child , being beggy beggy like a tiny underfunded diplomat. She was sharing watermelon and hoping people would share their food in return. Eventually she sat down looking completely satisfied with herself after successfully collecting enough bits and pieces from everybody else.

I was irritated.

Not because I hated her.
Not because she was wrong.
But because for once, I finally had enough.

That burger tasted like luxury.

I still remember the crunch of the onions. The sharp tang of the pickles. The saltiness of the fries. The feeling of ordering without panic. The relief of not standing out.

I remember feeling normal.

People love to moralize childhood from the safety of adulthood. But children experience class socially, physically, emotionally. They notice who has enough money. Who hesitates before ordering. Who shares because they want to versus who shares because social pressure demands it.

If I had only received the original forty dollars my father intended, I probably would have spent the entire trip calculating every bite.

Instead, for one glorious afternoon in Jamaica, I experienced what ease felt like.

And no, I did not tell my father.

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